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Indeed, there’s a good chance this secretary of state will have to continue to color between the lines unless the president gives him the leeway and discretion not to.

To understand why Kerry gave such a safe, risk-averse address, the central premise of which is, well, a galactic truism — that the key to the country’s power abroad is its economic strength and political cohesion at home — let’s understand his circumstances.

He’s a politician.

That brings me to the first of several factors that will make Kerry more of a balancer and not the risk-ready, forceful and manipulative secretary of state he may need to be to deal both with Barack Obama and the world America now finds itself in.

The founders were right when they envisioned the Senate as the saucer of milk to cool the House’s tea. That may be less the case today, but Kerry is still a Senate guy where decorum, consensus and civility — and risk aversion — set the tone for most business. He may be intellectually capable of challenging the status quo and thinking outside the box, but whether he can actually act on these bolder impulses is another matter. I’m not at all sure that Kerry has the toughness or Machiavellian nature of a Henry Kissinger or a James Baker.

Kerry’s speech last week at UVA was a political speech based on reality and common sense. But it certainly wasn’t ground-breaking or iconoclastic. Defending the president’s proposals to avoid the sequester and attacking Congress as the obstacle to effective foreign policy is not heroic language these days. But it is vintage Kerry. Will it be the rule or the first of several very important exceptions?